News

Air General is pleased to announce the awarding of two contracts for cargo handling to start in the fall of 2017.

The first is to announce that Southwest Airlines has awarded Air General a new cargo handling location at Washington-Dulles international Airport, joining our 2nd IAD facility that currently handles British Airways, Aer Lingus and Royal Air Maroc!

Our second contract is with Norwegian Airlines to be handled in Denver, CO at Denver-International Airport! The Norwegian schedule into DEN will begin in September and they will have two weekly flights between Denver and London Gatwick Airport on Tuesdays and Saturdays, operated by the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

We are absolutely delighted to announce that Air General is pushing further west into new territory with the award of cargo handling contracts for Alaska Air, United Cargo and American Cargo in Salt Lake City, Utah!

We will be subleasing the same warehouse space that these three carriers are currently handled in at SLC. The current supplier TAC Air is exiting the cargo handling business but retaining their ramp handling and FBO operations in SLC.

The acquisition of this new city to our network came about, as often happens, because the carriers contacted Air General with a call for help as their current provider could not meet their expectations. In each case, these suppliers contacted Air General because of our record of achievement with them in other airports. This is a great testament to our ladies and gentlemen in the field who work so hard to provide a superior service to our customers.

This will be the 13th city we serve for Alaska Cargo (we recently opened DFW for them!), the 14th for United Cargo since we recently added IND for them and the 17th for American Cargo!

While it seemed at first that it might be a “turnkey” operation with a warehouse already configured and in decent working order and a staff from the former supplier already in place, we know from our experience to always “expect the unexpected!”

Terry Hennessey, Properties and Implementation Manager began immediately to negotiate a sublease from the prior service provider, TAC Air. As often happens, difficulties in obtaining proper information about the lease, equipment availability, and tonnage data caused delays. Gabe Rodriguez, Regional Director began to organize his Transition Team but faced similar concerns with confidentiality issues, TAC Air people leaving before we could ask them to join our team and serious ID badging restrictions.

Despite the obstacles that would create havoc for any Project Manager, Gabe has pulled together a full station opening in minimal time on Saturday night into Sunday with the assistance of Terry, Chris Kubasko, Steve McCombs and Ali Alawi.

Kelly Feeney from United Cargo has been a fabulous support and was instrumental in arranging travel for three new hires to train for two weeks with Mike Hall and Rana Hudgins on UA UC360 at our BNA facility.

New hires are very excited about starting their jobs with Air General. They worked long hours on Saturday to help clean and organize the office and warehouse.

Others on station on Day One to support the startup include Doug Colvin, Brandi Gebhardt and Greg Jones from United, JohnCarlo Martinez from American and Tony Dimeglio from Alaska Air Cargo.

The newest station in our network is projected to handle 600,000 pounds monthly plus another 59,000 pounds of passthrough mail from American Cargo.

On January 27th, 2017, Morocco celebrated their reintegration to the African Union as an opportunity for greater trade with other African countries. This trade however represents a small percentage of Morocco’s overall foreign trade.

Much of this foreign trade takes place with the USA, and on Friday Air General began handling cargo for Royal Air Maroc into WashingtonDulles.

Their 787 aircraft which will operate to IAD three times weekly has the potential to draw traffic to our warehouse in IAD which used to be trucked to ATL. This is good news for Air General because this is the first African carrier we can count among our current airline clients.

The additional of Royal Air Maroc brings the number of airlines we service to 22.

Thanks to IAD’s management team of Danny and Hicham and Regional Director Gabe Rodriguez for all their efforts to help the only Royal Air Maroc Manager in the USA, who is based in JFK, to get the airline set up for an air cargo operation. They basically set it up for him!!

Air General is pleased to announce the opening of IND and would like to thank everyone for their support as we have officially started cargo handling for United Airlines in Indianapolis, IN IND!

Many thanks to the transition teams: Ernie Ramierez/MCO, Eric Joseph/MSY, Dottie Flannery/STL and Frank Meier/SDF are also here tthis week in IND to assist the new staff and new Station Manager Randy Fancher make this a successful start up. Mike Hall/BNA and Kimi Aiello/MCO will be in IND next week to continue the support.

Please join us in wishing IND Station Manager Matt Holden and all the IND staff the best of luck in their new operation!

Pictured Above From Left To Right:James Maloney, Project Manager, Air General; Jason Maloney, Videographer; Hicham Inezli, Station Manager, Air General IAB

Congratulations to the IAB team who began handling Aer Lingus in Washington Dulles International Airport yesterday, August 29, 2016.

Erick Lynch, Area Customer Service Manager for IAG Cargo was thrilled to have Air General as their new cargo handling partner in IAD. Erick said, “Air General’s professionalism and consistency in meeting the customer’s needs, is a perfect matchup with Aer Lingus”.

We’d like to thank all of the supporting staff who helped make this startup a success, especially MCO’s Daniel Watson and Brian Williams who trained our staff & John Dovalis, who allowed them to come to IAD, and of course IAB’s Station Manager, Hicham Inezli, IAB’s Operations Manager, Dany Ghattas for their dedication to meeting the customer’s needs

Air General is pleased to congratulate Brad Bryson and his wonderful team of ocean freight experts as they complete their move into a brand new warehouse in Dallas.

The 58,000 square feet, 24 dock doors facility opened this past spring. Manager Brad Bryson and his team managed the relocation while maintaining the business and adding new accounts at the same time with very little outside assistance. When asked what he liked best about their new surroundings, he said “what I am more proud of than the move itself is that all of my employees pitched in to make this happen.”

In late September 2015, Air General will add another Alaska Air Cargo operation, this time in BNA (Nashville, TN). Station Manager Mike Hall and the entire Nashville team have been working hard to prepare for this expansion, and we are very proud of their efforts thus far!

Air General continues to grow in TPA and with Lufthansa. TPA joins CLT, DFW, and DEN in adding Lufthansa Cargo operations for Air General.

On September 25th, Air General had an extremely successful start up of our new Lufthansa Cargo handling operation in Tampa, FL (TPA). Thanks in large part to the countless hours of preparation that have been undertaken by Regional Field Director-South, Ken Coleman, TPA General Manager Rick McGiveney, as well as various Lufthansa experts from our CLT, DFW and DEN stations.

The A340 300 first flight arrived on time, and was welcomed into Tampa by the traditional water cannon greeting all new flights are privileged to experience.

The first outbound flight departed with a respectable cargo load of four pallets, capably built by the new Tampa team with plenty of support from our seasoned Tampa crew, some new staff, and several Lufthansa personnel for on site support.

Lufthansa will operate five flights a week into Tampa, but they do have a longer term goal to operate daily as they expand in the very popular Florida market.

Lufthansa is a key account with Air General, and we know that TPA can handle the challenge of adding an 11th airline to it’s roster!

Air General expanded our operation in Denver to a second facility in August 2014 with the addition of Lufthansa Cargo, Alaska Air, Icelandair, and American Airlines. We have handled British Airways, Delta Cargo and US Airways in DEN for many years.

WestJet and Air General partner to open WestJet’s newest US destination, Chicago O’Hare. This is the first cargo handling partnership between Air General and WestJet. We are happy to welcome them to the Windy City! WestJet is the second airline to move to Air General in ORD following Aer Lingus earlier this month.

Air General opened a sixth location for JetBlue in DTW on March 10th. In addition to JetBlue, we handle Delta, United, US Airways, AA small packages and US Post Office mail all while coping with record snowfalls this winter!

Air General dispatched two Aer Lingus 330s from Chicago, Illinois to Dublin, Ireland on April 7th, making Chicago the second airport in which we handle freight for Aer Lingus. We have been the cargo handling company for Aer Lingus in MCO for over five years.

After successfully opening Austin, TX for Alaska Air several months ago, we have now been awarded their cargo handling contract in Minneapolis, MN. Other stations handled by Air General in their network include DCA, MCO, STL and MCI.

On the Ides of March (March 3rd) British Airways opened their first new airport operation in the USA in several years, when their Boeing 787 Dreamliner touched down five minutes early in Austin, TX.

Air General was selected as the cargo handling agent for this new BA station and on the first day we accepted 14,821 kilos of freight plus three animals for the departure.
Our new cargo facility in AUS is our second in this airport. We currently handle United Airlines Cargo, JetBlue and Alaska Airlines cargo in our first facility.

On February 1 Air General began handling cargo and mail for US Airways in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. FLL becomes the 15th city in which we provide cargo services for the US Airways. We opened our operation in FLL in October of 2012 when we were awarded the contract to handle United Airlines. Soon after we added Air Canada and now US.

On Monday, January 27, Air General commenced a new cargo handling operation for Alaska Airlines in Austin, Texas. This brings the number of airports in which we currently handle Alaska Airlines to four. Air General inaugurated our Austin operation in June of 2013 with United Airlines as our first customer, followed closely hereafter by JetBlue. In March of 2014 we will handle cargo for the inaugural British Airways service to Austin as well.

Minneapolis, Minnesota will become our fifth Alaska Airlines location when we start service for them on March 31, 2014.

On December 16th COPA Airlines started service between Tampa, FL and Panama City and chose Air General to handle their air cargo requirements. A member of the Star Alliance, Copa Airlines is based in Panama City and serves as the flagship carrier for Panama. It is one of the fastest growing companies in Panama, and Air General is pleased to welcome COPA to the Air General family.

On Monday, December 9th Air General opened its 23rd air cargo airport location in Memphis, TN to handle Southwest Airlines cargo. The former Air Tran service is one of several which Southwest took over recently as a result of their merger. Shippers are very happy to have another airline handling freight to and from the city.

On Monday, December 9th Air General commenced handling American Airlines cargo in New Orleans, LA. The very first small package shipment was film showing the fabulous victory of the New Orleans Saints playing in the National Football League game at the Superdome the previous night!

On December 1, 2013 Air General will take responsibility for the entire warehouse operation including the property lease for Lufthansa Cargo. Included in this arrangement will be back office and security screening, as well as cargo flight security for LH and their customer Qantas.

Air General has managed the British Airways Cargo operation in DFW for the past 30 years. On December 1st both the BA and Avianca operations will move over to the present LH facility where Air General will handle all four airlines.

American Airlines Cargo awarded Air General three new cities for cargo handling. The first of “The Three Ms” opened in Orlando, FL in October. Minneapolis, MN opens on December 2nd and New Orleans, LA will open on December 9th.

With the addition of these new cities we will now be servicing eight cargo stations for AA. Last year AA announced a new re-branding and marketing campaign dubbed “A New American”. The staff at Air General are proud to be a part of “the new AA.”

Air General is pleased to announce they now provide cargo handling services at Kansas City International Airport (MCI) effective April 1, 2013 for United Cargo, Alaska Airlines, Frontier Airlines, US Airways and Delta Airlines.

Since 1961, Air General’s family-owned organization has provided consistently high-quality cargo handling delivered by dedicated people focused on customer service excellence. They look forward to a long and productive partnership in MCI, providing fast, secure and reliable cargo handling service to all their customers.

United Cargo, US Airways and Frontier Airlines transitioned to Air General cargo handling in MSP on January 22nd 2013. Air General is providing cargo services from the former United warehouse as well as providing mail handling services out of the US Postal Service airport facility. We also handle AA company mail. In June we added our first contracts with Icelandair and Sun Country. The main commodity imported from Icelandair is fresh fish, which is then transported via Sun Country to other areas of the country.

Air General is pleased to announce they have been awarded their first contract with Southwest Airlines to handle cargo in Manchester, New Hampshire. The MHT cargo operation was inaugurated on January 15th and becomes the 21st location in the Air General network, and the first location in their new home state of New Hampshire.
Air General began as a cargo and ramp handling company in BOS and was therefore headquartered in Massachusetts for nearly 50 years before making the move to Portsmouth New Hampshire in 2011.

Qatar Airways, the industry renowned 5 star carrier and the fastest expanding airline in the world, added two weekly Boeing 777 freighters into IAH. While capacity is shared with Atlanta, there is plenty of new opportunity for freight forwarders on Wednesdays and Saturdays for the European and Orient markets. There’s no shortage of freight that can be uplifted out of Houston. Qatar Airways parks right behind Air General’s warehouse for a very convenient handling. Houston’s monthly throughput will now exceed 3 million kilos per month.

Air General immediately increased warehouse space, and has agreed to provide segregated office and operations accommodations for Qatar Airways Air General and staff.

Air France has chosen Air General as their air cargo handler in Orlando Florida. Service is set to begin in June 2011. Our team of air cargo professionals in Orlando are some of our most experienced in our system and are excited for the new service to begin. Air General and Air France have worked together in the past and look forward to this new partnership.